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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26686108">Not So Great A Sacrifice</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlagueSimulators/pseuds/PlagueSimulators'>PlagueSimulators</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dragon Age: Origins</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bad Ending, Dragon Age: Origins Quest - The Battle of Denerim, Former Circle Mage Warden, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mage Warden (Dragon Age), Older warden, Purple Prose, Self Sacrifice, Self-Destruction, disguising your self-destructive tendencies in self-sacrifice</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 03:47:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,234</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26686108</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlagueSimulators/pseuds/PlagueSimulators</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Not choosing is also a choice. Suicide TW, please take care.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Implied Past Alistair/Warden - Relationship, Loghain &amp; Male Warden, Loghain &amp; Warden, Sten/Male Warden, Sten/Warden (Dragon Age), Zevran Arainai/Male Warden, Zevran Arainai/Warden</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Not So Great A Sacrifice</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The battle for Denerim raged beyond anger through desperation into the cold certainty of hopelessness. Elsewhere on the battlefield, the Queen took up her sword and armor, and mounted her horse to lead a last charge. </p><p>Clan Sabrae archers ran for the high ground not on fire, Orzammar warriors clenched into rank, and the remaining mages of Kinloch Hold found there could be no true daylight under the brown haze of the Blight.</p><p> </p><p>Here, the Archdemon climbed forth from the broken wreckage Riordan had made its bed. Somewhere behind them he lay among the fallen; somewhere behind them a golem lifted a Sister to their shoulders, and a healer knelt beside an exiled Warrior. A mabari stood at her back, jaws black with blood. </p><p>Only three remained at the side of the Warden Commander as the Archdemon raised its crowned head, all six eyes intent on the end before it.</p><p>The first, a soldier of the Qun far from the warm rain and warm sea that bore him South, hewed into the flank of the Archdemon. The bitter blue blade cut deep, and whet its secret iron with tainted blood and bone. </p><p>The air soured in the dragon's scream, and the sten was knocked back as the great serpent body rippled and lashed out to free the thorn in its side. Asala would not budge, not for the Archdemon or for the soldier. </p><p>His hands were empty as he pulled himself upright, towards danger and not out of it. He could see the dark head of his commander in the shadow of one mutilated wing; a small part of him fretted at the loss of kadan's helmet. </p><p>The greater part surged in triumph and then a blank fear that no tamassran could quell as he saw the sword in the Warden's hand. How he moved towards the dragon with the language of one of the South's mutilated prophets. </p><p>A wing fell between them and the soldier stood, no sword, no plan, his thoughts swimming together in a heretical canto.</p><p>
  <i>You gave me my purpose, my soul, won't you take it with you? Take me with you, we should have been brothers, I should have drunk that cup of poison, I should have been your blood, I should have asked you for more than just my soul-</i>
</p><p> </p><p>The second, an Antivan Crow that had lost or left his murder, skittered over the corpses of men and darkspawn. Fast as carrion fowl but too slow. The elf sang his bloodied sword into the genlock that surged to cut him off, with all the intent of a man threshing wheat. </p><p>He had eyes only for the griffin now black stained. The back it marked sure as a brand of ownership.</p><p>
  <i>I said that I would storm the gates of the Dark City at your side, I would do anything you asked me, but I am asking, now, as I should have asked earlier don't do this, don't win this fight, leave with me, leave with me and let the Blight take the South just stay by my side I need to stand by your side-</i>
</p><p> </p><p>The third, an old campaigner with a rook's eye and shoulders heavy with a weight unshared, pulled himself up where the wyrm had cast him aside like so much Ferelden tinder.</p><p>He alone could see the Warden's face from there, and met his eyes. The man he had hunted and now served looked back with a face both strange and familiar. </p><p>The face of Death might be so, some part of Loghain no longer Mac Tir thought. </p><p>
  <i>Will you take it from me as well? I didn't deserve mercy, I certainly don't deserve redemption, but will you take this from me? Have you ever done a selfish thing in your life, Warden? Don't start now-</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Urthemial twisted His head from considering the fallen Warden, towards the one still standing. His wings burned and seared, His side ached and throbbed. His mind still coiled in a dark place where hunger bowed pride low. Two lives for the rest. And they were such small things, two lives.</p><p>The Warden's shield buckled as the dragon grabbed at it and the arm beneath. His dulled talons pierced armor and skin and Marangoz screamed, buckling under the weight. The Archdemon set its six eyes on the back of his bare neck, and licked its teeth, neck coiling to strike.</p><p>One eye burst black and went dark, a throwing knife lodged deep in the gaping socket. Urthemial lurched back with a shriek, briefly only a wyrm scrabbling to escape the pain. Before He sighted it, an elf in light armor still forcing his way forward, and rage bloomed in what remained of His heart. </p><p>Tainted or not, a dragon still has fire. It drew in breath, and coals ignited behind its jaws, deep in the hollow of its chest.</p><p>
  <i>We will have your life, and we will have their bodies, and we will have our hunger and this wretched, drowned land and all its profanities, how dare you even pretend to hope-</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Blue spasmed off the air, eating into the black scales like acid. The last of his mana still hanging as ozone, Mateu raised his untouched sword arm with a cry.</p><p>Whatever remained of an Archdemon's heart, steel cut through it as true as any other darkspawn's.</p><p>Urthemial's breath faltered, and the fire burned low. He, it, he looked down into the Crow's face, and saw eyes both strange and familiar.</p><p>Of course I would die for an elf, he thought ruefully, Tevinter suddenly looming over his mind thick as ash. He wanted to look northwards.</p><p> </p><p>What went through Mateu Marangoz's head? The words cannot be found in this world. </p><p>There are signs: a battlefield on the edge of the known world, an urn in the mountains, a withered rose. The black of the Deep Roads, the walls of two Circles. </p><p>There are signs that the living can only try to translate, never know in truth.</p><p>The Archdemon's body and the Warden's turned like dwarven clockwork, until it struck a gear, and the great bulk of the dragon collapsed over his in one final note.</p><p> </p><p>Elsewhere on the battlefield the Queen of Ferelden routed the disordered darkspawn like the sea rushes over sand. A Dalish hunter saved a Dead Legionnaire, and was in turn saved by a Circle mage. Lives were lost, victory was won, the Blighted dead piled up in poisonous piles that would be burning long after the celebrations ended.</p><p>Here a Qunari far from the Qun hauled himself out of the leathery shroud of a tattered wing, and forgot his sword. He staggered to the dragon's neck, and bent his body to drag it off.<br/>
An Antivan Crow stumbled down the blood-slick stones to pull the Warden out from under.</p><p>The former Teryn of Gwaren, Regent of Ferelden, now sole and leading Grey Warden in Ferelden watched the elf and the sten bend to the task. Of weeping, for the elf, of checking Marangoz's pulse, for the Sten. Loghain wished he had a Qunari's distrust in the covenants of magic. </p><p>He breathed deep, and something in him ached in the act.</p><p>Above them the brown clouds split open. The first blue since Cailan led the doomed charge at Ostagar showed its strange, familiar face. A mage looked up and felt sunlight on her brow.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is an AU of my canon Warden's decisions. Usually Mateu assumes Morrigan would realize that if he refuses the Dark Ritual, it's not because he doesn't trust her.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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